


ash, ash

by IrisParry



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Implied Slash, M/M, canon character death (s?), mentions of canon-typical violence, post-adwd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:32:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrisParry/pseuds/IrisParry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a tumblr prompt: "Jon finds out about the leeches Stannis and Mel used to curse Robb." </p><p>Jon Snow has had his fill of lies, but now some forgotten part of him is wishing for one to cling to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ash, ash

**Author's Note:**

> This was for a fic war in which basically everyone tried to make everyone cry, just to give you fair warning... Post-ADWD, implied Jon/Robb and Jon/Stannis that you’d have to be really bloody determined to read as gen, but nothing remotely explicit (sorry).

So this is how the North was lost.

Jon has to read the words again.

_The usurper, Balon Greyjoy._

Their meaning had clicked into place immediately, from the first name, had made half-hidden knowledge real and undeniable.

_The usurper, Joffrey Baratheon._

He reads again, as if some fresh interpretation will be possible.

_The usurper -_

Jon Snow has had his fill of lies, but now some forgotten part of him is wishing for one to cling to.

_The usurper -_

The North _burned._

*

They had been enemies, Robb and Stannis, Jon knows that. Jon had once believed it might not have gone to the death, were it not for the battle at the Red Fork, were it not for the Freys’ treachery. Even so, he might still have been able to swallow it if Stannis had faced Robb in battle, had cut through good Northmen to find him, on a field of blood and snow, had shoved that chunk of pig iron he called Lightbringer into Robb’s belly -

But it was not Lightbringer, Stannis’s old sword. It did R’hllor’s work, but it was not R’hllor’s weapon. _The red sword of heroes._ Jon would laugh, if he quite remembered how.

Jon closes Davos’s book, the journal the old smuggler had kept to practice his letters. He leans back in his chair, hands still clutching the battered leather cover, and his knuckles are white but there’s nothing to be made of that. Davos had not wanted any part of the sorcery, even though he could only ever have a glimpse of its true nature, had known then even less than he knew later. Jon had been given no choice in the matter.

Across the room, Stannis sleeps. Jon would find it remarkable in the man even if he had not seen the same things Stannis has, on the Wall, at Storrold’s Point. At Winterfell.

At King’s Landing.

Stannis sleeps, on his back, like the dead. Jon looks, the firelight flickering the illusion of expression across his features, and he remembers Robb sprawling star-shaped, blankets kicked down around his feet. He remembers snowflakes melting in Robb’s hair.

At once his vision clouds, white and searing, and he knows rather than sees - an old man raising a toast, a great grey wolf scrabbling at a gate, an axe dropping from a woman’s hand. He knows rather than hears - behind the lie of blood drumming in his ears, the snatch of a tune…

_Yes, now the rains weep o’er his hall  
and not a soul to hear -  
and not a soul -_

Jon knows rather than feels the wounds thudding into his shoulder, his thigh, and finally his heart, burning so fiercely he cannot call them hot or cold with any certainty.

Catelyn Stark’s face is a mask of horror, and in that moment she is more terrible to behold than death will ever make her.

*

When Jon surfaces, the fire has burned low and Stannis has turned to face the wall, breathing even, back bared to the room. To Jon. His scars there are still livid, criss-crosses of purple-black, red splashes of maimed flesh. Jon’s are white, white and cold and hard. He will never see Robb’s, will never trace them and learn them and watch them fade.

Three leeches, three kings. A pop, a hiss, and the North was lost. The weapon was forged. Jon can feel his body curl in on itself, twisting in vain, world flames, life reduced to the consuming, transforming agony. He can feel the arrows, Roose Bolton’s blade. Jon wishes he could remember the feel of Robb’s hands, of his breath on Jon’s neck in the morning.

He can’t feel the power anymore, inside. That same power that took Robb. It is too much a part of him. He wishes he could feel anger. He wishes he could cry.

_I am R’hllor’s weapon. I was tempered in Robb’s heart._

Stannis sleeps. Jon stands.

_The night is dark, and I am the terror._

**Author's Note:**

> So this is kind of a mess but I remembered Stannis telling Jon "But you are the weapon the Lord has given me" when they met for the first time on top of the Wall, and liked the idea of Jon as Lightbringer, the horror of his being revived by the same power that had a hand in killing Robb (depending on your POV)...


End file.
